Miguel Lopez-Lemus says that Mexican culture deals with death as an everyday part of life. “It’s like eating hotdogs. It’s a part of the culture.”
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Images of Mexican archaeological sites and traditional Day of the Dead celebrations, during which people sing and dance in cemeteries, are projected onto a large screen while actors read poems by Octavio Paz, Alfonso Reyes, Carlos Pellicer, and Aztec king Nezahualcoyotl, among others. Whether obscure or straightforward, all the poems reckon with death’s melancholy beauty.
In 1974, when Lopez-Lemus was 17, he came to Chicago for what he thought would be a temporary stay. He ended up getting married and enrolling at Elgin Community College, where he started the Latino Experimental Theatre Company in 1984, because, he complains, “there weren’t enough opportunities for Latino cultural and artistic expression.”
In 1987 he moved the company to Chicago, where it would perform everything from A Doll’s House to pieces combining Mexican classical music with dance and poetry. Lopez-Lemus hopes his group will continue expanding the boundaries of Latino theater. “What we’re creating is art, and art should have no boundaries,” he says. “We’re always interested in locating Latino actors. We’re still developing.”
Mexico se escribe con “m” de muerto is offered as part of the Guild Complex’s fourth annual Musicality of Poetry festival this Wednesday at 7:30 PM at the Chopin Theatre, 1543 W. Division. Admission is $7, $5 for students, $3 for open-mike participants. Call 278-2210 for more info.
–Rosalind Cummings-Yeates
